The Memory Palace (Pros and Cons)

The Memory Palace (Pros and Cons)

The other day, I was giving someone my phone number. Not an everyday occurrence, but it should have been simple enough.

I was all “Hey Brain, can I have my phone number”
And brain was like “Phone Number! Right! Coming up!”

And what did I end up writing down? 810-228-3... BRAIN! That is a number that stopped being relevant in 2002! You might remember that year, it was the one when we moved out of my parent’s house and no longer needed that neat Cobra cordless phone!

“You wanted a phone number.”

“YOU HAD ONE JOB!”

And thus the fundamental flaw inherent in the Method of Loci is revealed.

Let me back up a second, because this requires some explanation. If I ever write a book for helping parents understand challenged kids based on my own experiences, I will title it “A Fistful of Learning Disabilities” and if I write a sequel for people challenged by sleeplessness I will write it “A Few Sleep Disorders More” because that’s how the movies went! If it bugs you did I didn’t go with “A Fistful of Sleep Disorders” you can read all about my feelings on the subject in my blockbusting, best seller follow up “The Good, The Bad, And the Fuck You, That’s Why” but I digress.

Dyslexia makes digesting words really hard, ADD makes reading a huge pain in the ass to begin with. If you’ve ever had your eyes just drift over the words, but not take them in, it’s kind of like that, only the book sometimes seems to have been translated by someone who only speaks English as a third language and never actually learned Centari, but figured they could translate the book based on the pictures. Now make it three times more frustrating than that, because your basic ADD sufferer is actually paying attention to every signal entering their brain, but I digress.

So while I was still young, and they thought that I was either what was still being called retarded or possibly a next level “Professor X is going to show up any day now” superbeing, suggestions were made. I honestly have no idea what side of the ledger Memory Palace came from, but it was one of the things I had explained to me. I distinctly remember by father told me about a method called Roman Room, or Journey Method. Now, I love my father very much, and he was doing his best, but can we all agree Memory Palace is a way more badass name and move on?

So a quick breakdown, if you haven’t read any of the links I presented...

Imagine that you are trying to remember your grocery list, a long and complicated list that would require a lot of work. Instead of writing it down and reading the list, you remember the list by walking through your home and look at a series of object you placed there earlier. You place them in the imaginary version of your home, not the real one. The idea is you remember your home pretty darn well, so you would remember the things you place in it. Now, either you place the actual physical steak you want, or you get symbolic (or even resort to puns) and maybe just leave a wooden steak imbedded in the floor. You’ve got a flower blooming in the window (get flour) and a bird sitting on the flower pot (eggs... probably?) and so on. It’s more complicated than that, way more complicated.

It can become hyper-complicated and even fractally complicated. Quick example, I’ve got a wing of the palace dedicated to each person I know. I walk down the wing, and each door has some notice explaining what that particular memory is about. I close in on the door and instead of just zooming in, I get as much information as my attention can hold. I enter the room, and the curtain has my mental notes about the meal we had together that day. I close in a little, and I can remember what each of us has, in a little further how it tasted, in a little further and how each morsel felt, in a little further and each drop of water that condensed on the glass and in a little further and I’ve suddenly lost five hours because staring that deep at the curtains takes time and energy and should only be done at leisure or because of a serious need. There is also the minor issue of other people, and for that the connections between them are connected by portals, themselves acting like hyperlinks to someone else’s story, while all existing in the same room. I said it got complicated.

The other problem is, numbers don’t work. Numbers are this... thing. That’s where my dyslexia goes into overdrive, numbers are not and will not ever be my friends. I can’t even trust them to enter my head in the right order (I don’t swap letters around much, but ho-boy does 12 turn into 21) how can I trust them to behave when they get there.

So here’s the thing, I do have these lavish wings where I put events. Things that happened to us, conversations we had, they are woven into the carpets and sensations are embedded in the grain of the wood that makes up the furniture, but stuff like names and labels, we have to go to the library for that. And you’re thinking “Hey, no problem, dewey decimal, microfiche, computerized records... google. No prob, I totes got this.” AND I just laugh and laugh and laugh.

See, my mind isn’t set up like a modern library, nothing so easy. My mind operates like a medieval library, and the three of you who know what that means are cringing and clutching their teddy bears. See, we’re talking parchment scrolls, and vellum books with no note on the spine about what’s in them. Books were so expensive that if there were thirty pages left over at the end, you’d just write thirty more pages worth of stuff to fill those pages. Piles of scrolls and manuscripts often shoved into cubby holes and possibly only the head librarian knew the contents and location of each scroll and book. Possibly, sometimes you had to just read through and see if you could find anything.

And that’s how the other half of the palace exists. One half, an opulent palace, as the name suggests, on the other half a cold cloister, half library and half warehouse (Because there are stacks of banker’s boxes stuffed full of “Old Business” that I don’t wish to clutter up space) and while the librarians are often quite helpful they will sometimes just blindly grab into the cubby that says “Phone Numbers” and hand me any old scrap that their fingers happen to grasp. Normally, it happens to be the piece on top, but I find I tend to run at full speed through the place when I’m dreaming and things can get disturbed.

The sheer amount of information my brain has decided it can hold onto it also a problem, since we haven’t a Bing Search but a Brother Bernard a Brother Darryl and another Brother Darryl. The problem is that the person who put everything in place, and who knows where everything is, was Father... Ted(?), and Ole Dad Teddy ain’t be seen round these parts fer some time now. This means that Bernard, Darryl and Darryl have exactly zero idea where to find anything beyond the basic labels.

As a result, I got the wrong number.

Etiquette: Dealing with a Drunk

A well-mannered person knows full well they should never become inebriated themselves, but we do not live in a perfect world and others still over indulge. Still, the rules for handling a friend who has over imbibed are fairly simple.

If the drunk in question is a douche, or has behaved in a douche like manner to people in the past, the protocol is simple. Steal everything you can, including their clothes, and leave them somewhere embarrassing. Feel free to commit credit fraud with their cards, give huge amounts to children’s charities so they’ll feel disinclined to try to recoup the losses when they sober up. If one is feeling particularly vindictive, leave that person in a farmer’s field near the cows with a dildo shoved somewhere rather too rude to discuss here. When asked, plead ignorance.

If the drunk is an actual friend who has seen you through a few bad turns, take them home and make sure they get to bed. Hold their head while the vomit, help clean them up and always take photos or video with your phone to remind them later how they looked. If a photo album of their drunken sobbing doesn’t wise them up to the idea of not getting so drunk again, e-mail it to their mother. It should be stated though that interventions like that are for people who refuse to change after ample chances.

If one is given custody of a female friend who has had too much, DO NOT RAPE HER! In fact, no molestation of any kind should happen as long as you have your strength. If she comes on to you, simply rebuff her. Even if she becomes angry at your denial of her favors, remain strong. She’ll thank you when she sobers up and has full control of her faculties. Under no circumstances should taking advantage of the situation even enter your mind. In fact, if you hear of someone taking advantage of a female friend, using her inebriation as the wedge to open her legs, that person should instantly be regarded as a douche. You are then clear to wait until he is drunk and follow the first section of advice. Really, if anything, you’re more required by the rules of polite society to slip that person a micky at the first possible chance and beat them to a pulp before leaving them in that farmer’s field.




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Interesting Facts: King Arthur

King Arthur was not actually a king, nor was he named Arthur. His real name was Steve Davis, but he decided to change it because he wanted to avoid confusion with the snooker player. Instead of being the king of England, he was actually Dog Catcher for the Rutland area. He was a very good dog catcher though, one worthy of legend. As his legend grew, so did the rank.

Strangely, as his legend grew, it also went back in time. Steve was a dog catcher in 1941, but the legend now claims that Arthur was around just after the fall of the Roman Empire. Story Logicians claims that by 2136 the legend of King Arthur will have taken place during the Cretaceous Period and will be about a velociraptor named Kent.

The Geek World is Not My World

I’ve often said this to people, but probably not enough. I am not actually a geek. Some people think I might be, because I know a lot of stuff. Useless, pointless, meaningless stuff, but more stuff than almost anyone else they know. Of course, every once in a while, they’ll need to actually know something and I’ll still have the answer to that. However, you just need to meet me for a few minutes on a good day to know I’m not a geek.
On a bad day, I’m so withdrawn that I might be mistaken for one, or I could be a mountain dwelling goblin unused to all the fresh air and sun light.

Now I know what you’re going to say. “Weirdo, you’ve got geeky interests. You’ve got lots of geeky friends. You only sleep with geeks as far as I know. How can you not be a geek?” Well, I only sleep with bisexuals or people with strong bi-curiosity as well. Does that make me bi? I used to hang out with a lot of black people, does that make me black? Most my friends are women, does that make me a woman? The thing is, there is something I’ve often noticed about the geek world, or rather geeks as people. It’s one of the things that keeps me out of their world.

Geeks aren’t very smart, or at least not smart in the right ways.

People who are part of the geek world cling to their intelligence like a life ring in a storm. They have a nasty tendency to act like they’re the only smart people in the world, and are unable to understand why the rest of the world regularly dumps on them. Of course, the rest of the world knows why they dump on geeks, and it’s got nothing to do with the glasses or liking Star Trek.

Lots of really cool people wear glasses these days. Doctor Who is pretty close to a mainstream interest and Star Trek has been mainstream for decades. Everyone knows Star Wars, and lots of people like Wil Wheaton, not just geeks. Wil might be seen as a cool geek among geeks, but he sort of left geekery back in the dust sometime ago. He became a cool person, who has geeky interests. Here is the thing, Wil Wheaton is smart in two ways. He’s smart in Cool Person ways and he’s smart in Geek Ways. He’s good with rules that can be written down and rules that cannot be written down.

Social Rules can never be written down because the way you understand them is by smell and feel. People who understand the rules understand there is no way to write them down because the information can’t really be written down. There are too many fiddly bits, too many complications, too many factors that adjust other factors and too many factors that adjust because the other factors have adjusted to the adjustments made by other factors that are always adjusting because why the hell not? You have to feel your way along, you have to read tiny subtle signals and you have to adjust constantly.

What I've mainly noticed about geeks, is that they're not very good at Social Rules because those can't be written down.

Computers aren’t like this. The rules of computers can be written down, and easily understood. The thing is, computers are far less forgiving than social situations. If you screw up with a computer, you kind of have to stop and start again from the beginning. Socially, you rarely really have to do this. You aren’t regularly cast from and entire circle of friends, having to start with completely new people just because you failed to use a slash when you were supposed to use a backslash. You’re not required to find that one damn slash and turn it into a backslash before anything else can move forward.

This is one of the reasons people who are good at Social Rules freak out on computers. They don’t understand why we can’t just forget that one error and move on. If it were a social situation, they’d take a little shit, and then we’d all move on. In the Geek World however, a mistake is a big thing that must be corrected. It must be documented, it must be categorized, it must be fixed before we can move on. This has crippled more than one geek before they even start. They see that they’ve made an error in a social situation and try to apply computer rules to it. They think they can’t fix it, because everyone else has ignored it, and think they’re being shunned. This is a problem because in reality, they fix it by ignoring it.

Geeks make a Social Error and flip out because they think it’s like a Computer Error and worry they won’t be allowed to fix it.

Of course, one problem is that Social Rules are a constantly shifting ice flow of contradictions and hierarchy. People who play that game badly think it’s about pushing those around you down lower so they can be higher. People who play the game well know it’s about raising people so that you can stand on their shoulders and you’ll all go up together. People who play the game abysmally, think it’s about making yourself like the guy you want to raise you up. And then you have the fear that one person will get raised and you’ll be ignored. That was, greatly speaking, the point of my last post.

The game has no formal rules though, because if people could read the specific rules, with each little detail there for them to see, they would start acting differently. Once they were conscious of their behavior, they would strive to change it. Try this as an experiment sometime, make mention of someone’s little verbal tick. Mention that they say “Exactly” a whole hell of a lot. Then watch as they strive to cay “Certainly” or “That’s Right” instead. When a normal person realizes their behavior can be tracked and predicted, they will start doing something else. This is another part of the rules, but one that can be written down because it’s large enough not to be specific. You can have the big unspecific rules written down because they don’t help much anyway.

No part of the Social Rules may be written down, or the rules cease to work. Including this one.

This is why I can’t really be a geek, or part of the Geek World. I can’t be part of the Normal World either though, in case you’re wondering. I understand both sets of rules and play each world with a combination of rules from both sides. I feel my way along in computers and science, and I use the strict written rules as a wedge to get into people’s heads. I understand enough about both worlds to float around and be a strange, quixotic character for either group, mainly by playing opposite strengths around each group while demonstrating an understanding of the rules of the current group.

Mind you I also have paranoia, A.D.D. and social anxiety disorder to work with here. So it’s very possible that my mind is cracked in just the right way that I can both exist and not exist in whatever world. I understand the rules quickly, but have a totally inability to really play by any of those rules. I don’t belong, but I can be here as an observer. I am accepted everywhere I go, but not really a member of any group.

I am, socially speaking, Schrödinger's Cat.

Which proves that maybe it wasn’t such a dumb idea and that things really can exist in two forms at once. But probably not, I suspect Schrödinger was right and the cat would either be alive or dead.

New Cocktails: Sparkfrost

Sparkfrost is a person, and as such, we had to produce it with her in mind. Originally, this drink had absinthe in it, but the anise flavor over took all the other flavors and the drink ended up so strong that it knocked people over just on the way from the bar to the table. One T-Totaller simply looked at a glass that had once contained the drink and became a raging alcoholic as a result. At least, that’s what he claimed in his lawsuit. You can add an equal amount of absinthe to the party if you want an authentic experience. We tend to go with La Fée but most anything good will do.

This is a drink to be served as cold as cold can be, to produce the proper amount of frost. The menu says it’s “A cold, but sparkling drink, it refreshes and surprises the drinker.” which is odd, because we don’t actually have menus in this place, just a black board where the names are written down. This recipe actually makes two drinks, because I only drink it with the real Sparkfrost.

4 measures Irish Whiskey (preferably a blended Bushmills)
4 measures white brandy (preferably Christian Brothers Frost)
1 measure Sour Mix
2 measure tonic water



Place a martini glass and the bottles of booze into in the freezer for a few hours before making this drink. It is important that all parts of the drink be as cold as possible. Remember, that sour mix and water will freeze solid, so keep that in the fridge. Put all into a Shaker with lots of ice. With a bar spoon, stir seven times clockwise and then strain into the frozen martini glasses.

Etiquette of Hiding a Body

Hiding the corpse of a recently killed person can be time consuming and difficult to perform on your own. The best idea is to have a friend to help dispose of the body. Of course, the optimal situation is to have your friend implicated in the killing so that there’s as much interest for them as there is for you. If that can’t be done, a true friend will still help you in this task.

The question then becomes, how to do you properly thank a friend for helping you dispose of the body? It greatly depends on the level of help your friend has given you. If you’ve inadvertently shot someone in the face and you’re just keeping your car in his garage while you clean out the back seat, then you need no more than a six-pack of domestic beer. If you’re friend is helping you throw a body off a bridge in hopes that the river might wash it away, then a few bottles of nice imported stuff is called for.

If your friend has given even more help, such as actually dismembering and burying the body then a few bottles of fine old whisky, scotch or bourbon is called for. These liquors should be of considerable quality and have spent between 15 and 20 years in the cask. If your friend doesn’t care for whisky, then Brandy of V.S.O.P. or X.O. varieties will be acceptable.

If a friend simply shows up, takes the body and makes all problems simply vanish while telling you not to worry, something special is needed. Such a friend, if they ask for no other favors, is the truest friend you could ever have. In these cases, a case of expensive Champagne or Hors d'age Brandy along with a box of fine imported chocolates is required. One should also always remember to keep such a friend on any and all holiday card lists one might keep.



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Interesting Facts: Silver Banksia

The plant that became the Silver Banksia of Southern Australia was first imported by American tobacco merchants in the late 1790s in hopes of destroying Australia’s burgeoning tobacco market. The plan unfortunately worked too well as most of Australia was turned into a desert by the plant’s destructive nature.

Since that time, Australians have always hated America and as a result only smoke cigarettes made from Chinese tobacco. Sadly for them, Chinese tobacco is actually a euphemism for the hardened and dried droppings of rabbits that roam the steppes of Mongolia.




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So I Might Be Responsible for Hipsters

So I Might Be Responsible for Hipsters


About... 15... 20 years ago? Maybe? I read an article about how art works. That’s the point. It was in a magazine, either Maxim or Playboy, it was of that tone. It was how a guy who had been in the New York Art scene noticed how art worked and how poseurs actually had greater success than the actual artists. He described a couple of artists who he thought were doing really great and original things, but they barely sold any work. However other artists, the poseurs according to the writer (he included himself in that category) who used elements these two were using had great success. He complained that there were deeply held reasons why the first artist used blue the way he did, but the copy-cats just knew what would sell and faked it. Either way, their stuff sold and the people who influenced them didn’t. The point of the article was more about how selling paintings in the art world is less about the actual art and more about how well you can bullshit art patrons at a show, but the intro will hold long enough. Incidentally, this happens all over the place. The first time I’d ever heard of Motorhead it was in the context of “These guys influenced every guitar heavy band of the 80s from Metallica to Megadeth to Guns N Roses of all people.” Any art/entertainment world has their version “This person/group were never really mega-stars with the public, but everyone in the biz knew they were awesome and borrowed from them liberally and went on to mega-star success.”

Now, my generation grew up in a post-modern world. Even though we didn’t understand it at the time, we were being raised by a generation who themselves were reading articles in popular magazines like Time and Newsweek that had titles like “What Does It Mean To Be Cool?” and other such nonsense. The Baby-Boomers had sort of lost track of cool, to be perfectly honest, and spent much of the 80s in discussion about what fit in the Monolith of “Cool” where Arthur Fonzarelli is the perfect form of cool. Yeah, just dropped 2001, Happy Days and Plato all in one sentence. Where’s your god now? The problem of course was the belief that cool as a rule was a single ideal that could be achieved if only you understood all the graces. Except Fonzie was more of a yūrei than a human, if yūrei is indeed the word I want. Jeeves would know.

There is a great Calvin and Hobbes comic that exemplifies this idea.


So having said all that, let me tell you a story about a kid named Tim. Tim might not have been his name, but it was so long ago that I can’t honestly yank his name from the files and I’m going to give him one instead. Now Tim was a freshman when I was a senior and his growth spurt was still three years off. As such Tim might have been all of four foot eleven. I remember him being shorter than me by a considerable distance and I’m not that tall now. Tim developed what can only be called a “Man Crush” on yours truly. A part of this was probably that I actually knew the kind of music he liked (kid was a huge fan of classical) and didn’t give him shit for not knowing who Nirvana was. Side note: When that band came out, I was the only person in my class that knew it was a state of mental awareness and not just some dirty guys from Seattle thrashing away at instruments in post-punk-rock-beat-combo rage.

Now, a note about me in high school. I stopped wearing jeans as soon as I started picking out my own clothes. I never found them comfortable, I never liked them. So I wore sweatpants or dockers. I wore t-shirts and flannel shirts because of comfort, to this day a cable knit sweater at Christmas receives a hearty “Have you actually met me?” And over that was a grey trench coat and a fedora to top it off. Not a trilby! A fedora is a felt hat that looks sexy as fuck. A trilby is a douche flag worn on the top of a douche to give instant identification of docheiness. As you might have noticed over the years, I ran out of fucks three days before my fifteenth birthday. I had quietly used up a life time supply, and from then on it was me and Honey Badger for life. I didn’t choose the honey badger, honey badger chose me. Although, the honey badger is not my spirit animal. My spirit animal is a two slice toaster, which is fitting when you think about it.

I didn’t listen to popular music, I listened to old Jazz, new Jazz, Prince, Mannheim Steamroller, Blues Traveler, Narada and Windham Hill collections, classical music, Irish folk music and so on. I threw some popular stuff in there, but it would get lost in so much else that no one could say with any regularity what was going to come up next. By the time I was a senior, everyone knew that trying to start shit with me was a one way ticket to Scaryville. Since I never beat a person, but rather grabbed their pressure points and explained to them in a soft, calm voice that despite what they thought, it didn’t actually hurt yet, but I could make it hurt. The last time someone had decided to snatch my hat as a gag, they were unprepared for how fast I turned, grabbed them by the throat and smashed their head down into the lunch table. This happened in the cafeteria in front of about four hundred thousand witnesses. When I didn’t beat the hell out of the guy, but simply explained “You don’t ever touch my hat, understand?” and wouldn’t let him up until he agreed that he understood and was very sorry and could he please run away forever now... that story was blown all out of proportion if you’ve heard it from another source. I didn’t even hit the guy, much less kill him. Point is though, no one fucked with the hat after that.

Except girls, who all wanted to be allowed to wear it, which I still don’t understand. It didn’t fit them and I could only tell they were winking because their cheek twitched, since the brim covered their eye, what did they want? Seriously? What was that all about?

So here is what Tim saw “That guy, THAT GUY! He walks around wearing a hat from before the dawn of cool. Mutha’ fucka’ is like proto-cool. He’s so cool that cool would have to chill out before it was as cool as him. And he doesn’t give people shit about not liking popular stuff, he even knows about classical and prefers Satie's Gymnopédies to Pachelbel’s Canon which I didn’t even know was allowed and maybe it isn’t, but dude ran out of fucks to give in 1982! I mean... just... holy shit dude!”

Now Tim missed a lot, having only seen the end result. He didn’t see the questioning, the bullying, the struggling, the second guessing, the fact that I had like, five friends total, or the fact that I was kind of sticking with the hat and coat at that point out of sheer bloody-mindedness. At least, I think I was, hard to tell at this stage. I need a new hat, and I very much need a new long coat. This isn’t important. Tim only saw the fact that the coolest dude in the room was a guy who didn’t much care, and did what he wanted to do and nobody could touch him. Hard for a very short 14 year old not to see that as a thing to be looked up to.

So Tim bought a hat and a coat. His was a wider brimmed chocolate brown fedora, and he got a brown London Fog trench coat. I was sporting a black hat and grey coat, so he wasn’t copying me completely, but he was super-proud of getting his shit together like I had. I told him it was cool while internally going “No, this is my look, get your own.” but not saying it because he was super-proud and I was clearly his hero. Heroes can’t just shit on somebody who announces “I’m gonna grow up to be just like you!” because... well you can’t! If I were older, I might have been sitting there having a two-word story “Skinsuit? Skinsuit!”

Now, is Tim a hipster? No, Tim is just a kid who wants to achieve something. He knows the hat is important, and the not giving even a percentage of a fuck, and the coat seems to play a roll. No, I think the third kid in this line, the one who has a man crush on Tim, who only hears “I don’t give a shit, don’t listen to anything mainstream, get a hat.” I think maybe he’s the hipster. He never saw the original cool person (Mike) or the original long haired hippy (Neil) or even the angry punk (Vivian) he only saw the enthusiastic kid who was still trying to figure it all out (Rick) and was wearing a hat not because Dana Andrews and Humphrey Bogart and Cary Grant (who I will crush on forever) wore the hat, but because one he knew in school wore it. That third kids saw the hat, found actual fedoras hard to come by (Seriously you have no idea how hard it was to find a fedora in 1990’s Michigan) and just bought a trilby because you could still get those at Sears. He didn’t know that the not listening to mainstream was less because I got off on other things, and thought it was because there was something inherently wrong with mainstream. Which is wrong, there are good songs and bad songs, and while I rejected some popular music I listened to stuff that was on the charts as well.

The fourth kid in this line? That kid is TOTALLY a hipster, and probably a real douche-canoe too. His connection to this idea of cool is totally lost, he doesn’t even know that the guy who wore a fedora and sweatpants ever existed, but the hat and the coat remain as a sort of racial memory. With no understanding at all about the original cool, and with elements having dropped off over time, he thinks not caring is the key. So he has to make sure you understand how much he doesn’t care, and how very much he doesn’t listen to mainstream music. He’s going to tell you these things, because in reality he does care and he does listen to Mylie Cyrus, but thinks that’s not cool. He’s lost the fact that the original cool person thought I Love Your Smile was actually a great little song.

And that’s what happened, a person does a thing, a second person decides the first person is a Cool Person® and copies that person. Perhaps a little ersatz, but an acceptable step in self-production. A third person admires the second person, and makes a copy. Now we have a copy of a copy. What made the first person so super-cool that he was constantly covered in liquefied oxygen (the sense of confidence needed to wear sweatpants with a fedora) has been lost in translation. The copies are more and more inferior, and the idea of cool has actually been splintered in a rather glorious way.

The Internet has ensured that there will never be a Monolithic Fonzie Model of Cool ever again. Cool has become like beauty, in the eye of the beholder, but we all know what the identifiers are. If we sat down and did some sciencey shit, we could probably say that this, this and this are part of the cool formula. Problem is, I was part of the, drugs, sex and self-harming Art Team. I couldn’t be doing with the writing shit down and taking measurements Science Side. Now it’s all down to what you like, what you think is cool, and who has the confidence to pull off whatever it is their doing. Probably some sort of honesty is in there too, but my brain is starting to hurt and I need some drugs or sex or something.

I never thought of myself as cool, until it was pointed out to me through the fact of someone wanting to look like me so much he went out and bought parts of his wardrobe to mimic parts of mine. It was around that time that I started to think, “Heeeey”

As a result, I’ve begun to think that me, and people like me, might be responsible for Hipsters. I’m not sorry, but I will admit I could have been a better steward of The Cool.

A few tales...

Remind me sometime, to tell you about the time I stole fire from the gods and blamed some guy for it. I wonder whatever happened to him. Eh, doesn't matter.

Speaking of guys that I forget what happened to them. I was once asked to be the savior of mankind, but I didn’t like the hours. Ended up getting some other guy to do it. Don’t know what happened to him either.

I might also tell you about the about the summer I spent in a convent, pretending to be a nun for tax reasons.

Strict Bastard

What Nietzsche always failed to tell anyone, was that being the ubermensch is actually super hard work. It's actually much easier to have simple concepts like good and evil, to have back in your head to tell you what is "right" and what is "wrong". It's not better, but it is way easier than coming up with your own standard of morals to live by.

Much easier to let someone else decide and then live by what they said. Particularly if you intend to live as a person who is good and decent to others and not just a selfish jerk. When you are making up your own system if values, the only person you have to justify yourself to is your future self, but knowing how I am with my former self, he's likely to be a strict bastard.

Interesting Facts: Pac-Man

Despite what some might think, Pac-Man does have an end game cinematic. All one must do is clear the 257th maze. Upon winning one will find a surprisingly detailed cinematic, explaining Pac-Man’s back-story, and chronicling his attempt to re-enter society after bingeing on so many power pellets. The fact that only four people in history have actually seen this cinematic has not dissuaded the makers of the game to put it into every version of the game that has ever been produced.

With the cut scenes in place, the story becomes a symbolic retelling of Satan tempting Christ. Inky is Satan, Blinky is Beelzebub, Pinky is Leviathan and Clyde is (as always) Clyde. The power pellets are actually communion wafers, and they reflect the real life aspect that anyone who eats one can then devour a ghost, but that power only lasts for 30 seconds.



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New Cocktails: Premature Ejaculation

An adaptation of one of the two Screaming Orgasm recipes I found. I think the name explains what you're going to get here. A drink for women who need to think about the guy they’re considering going to bed with.


1 measure Vodka
1 ½ measures Irish Cream
½ measure Coffee Liqueur
1 measure Amaretto
½ measure milk
½ measure cream
6 measures tonic water.

Blend all but the soda with ice. Strain into disappointingly small glass and add soda to fill the glass completely. Watch as the drink foams over and spills onto the bar before you get to enjoy any of it. Contemplate the truth within this drink, consider your partner and try to choose better next time.